Once upon a time, the ending of "Lost" was actually radically different

Fun fact: There’s a volcano on the Lost island. If you didn’t know this before, now you do — and the finale of the cult ABC series actually almost ended in this volcano. That’s either the best, or worst, place to face off against undead-black-smoke-monster-John-Locke. Too bad we never got to see it.

In the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, the magazine dives into lots of TV ~untold stories~, one of them being this Lost ending that never happened. The showrunners of the series — Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse — started planting the seeds for this volcano very early on in the series. While never a prominent image — like say, the black and white imagery — there are volcanos hidden in the background of a few scenes, and one even pops up in the Dharma classroom with little Benjamin Linus.

ABC

And here you thought Lost was just making everything up as they went along.

The original ending for the series would still have been the same, good vs. evil, Jack vs. The Man in Black struggle that we know today, but instead of taking place on the side of a cliff and in a magical cave of light, this whole battle was supposed to go down in the volcano!!

“The volcano had been dormant for the duration of the series,” Lindelof explained to EW. “But based on moving into this [showdown between good and evil], the island had become unstable and the volcano was going to erupt. We were going to have lots of seismic activity, and ultimately, there was going to be this big fight between the forces of good and the forces of evil, which ended up in the series manifesting as Jack and The Man in Black, in the midst of magma. Magma spewing everywhere!”

Sounds cool and exciting, right? The showrunners thought so. ABC, not so much. For the network, “spewing magma” was just like, a littttttle too costly.

“ABC was like, ‘Guys, we love you, and we’re letting you end the show; we can’t let you bankrupt the network in the process,'" Lindelof continued.

And this is funny, because at the time, Lost was actually the most expensive pilot ever made for television. But anyway, the location of this battle was moved to the cliff, the idea of the volcano was abandoned, and became nothing more than another Lost red herring (hello, Hurley-bird). So have fun trying to find the volcanoes through all six seasons, but we’re telling you now: They mean nothing.